[Feingold is an American critic and translator. In the following excerpt, he assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Three Tall Women.]

Every writer knows that the hardest task in writing is to find your center. Once you're there, words, thoughts, events, characters, ideas, whatever, will flow freely. And the results, after some contemplation, will be far easier to shape and polish than if you had forced them. The hard part is getting to that sacred place at the core of your being from which all literary blessings flow.

On this count, the renaissance of Edward Albee is one of the happiest events in the history of American playwriting. After the era of forced writing that brought us treats like Counting the Ways and The Man Who Had Three Arms, and the era of self-imposed exile when he...